


You Don't Mean Nothing At All (To Me)

by cerebel



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alignment Swap, Charles is evil, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebel/pseuds/cerebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik stays. Everything falls apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Mean Nothing At All (To Me)

Erik doesn't blink. He doesn't flinch away. He doesn't close his eyes. He makes sure he sees and feels every bit of the destruction laid out before him.

Chicago has been devastated. Several of the skyscrapers have collapsed.

Mystique is by his side, her breath ragged and sharp. She is wounded. Scarlet blood staining her uniform purple-black. Beside her, a hint too close: Beast. To Erik's left, Riptide, Havoc. Others, behind him.

Before them:

A silent army.

That's the worst part, thinks Erik. Men following orders, they shout, they yell, they force their petty will on their victims. These men stand completely still, rank after rank.

Erik is afraid.

"What do we do?" asks Angel.

"We fight." After all, he's known this was coming. Ever since the damned Cuban Missile Crisis, he knew this was coming.

He holds up a hand, feeling the thrum of the guns in the soldiers' hands.

"I'm coming, Charles," he murmurs.

Sharp cracks of metal on metal: the guns have been loaded and aimed. That is the only response.

~*~

Years earlier, Erik makes a choice. Charles lies bleeding in his arms, and everything he thought he knew is gone. If he leaves -- if he leaves now, he will be alone forever.

That thought is far too much for him to take.

Far away, he feels missiles detonate, harmlessly, in midair. Fall into the ocean. Not a single one hits their target.

_I could make you stay. But I won't._ And for a moment, Erik isn't sure whether that's communication or memory.

Charles' eyes are focused on him. Him alone.

"Let's get you to a hospital," he says, softly.

~*~

Later, Charles awakens.

He is silent. Erik feels that, in some strange way, he's disappointed. Disturbed. As though the world isn't quite how it should be.

_You thought I was stronger_ , thinks Erik. _I'm not._

Charles looks right at him. Blinks, weakly, in the growing sunlight. "You want to go," he says. "I won't stop you, Erik."

Erik shakes his head. "I'm going to stay," he says.

"For me?" Charles' tone makes it clear he believes himself to be an inadequate reason.

Erik fixes him with a stare. "For you," he confirms.

"Erik."

"For you, I choose to stay."

He watches Charles' distress at the words. He watches Charles try and fail to understand his own emotions.

~*~

Panic spreads through the world.

They watch, on the flickering black-and-white television. Charles is dissatisfied with it. He twitches and shifts and brushes his hands against one another, constantly. Always in motion, as though to make up for his lack of immobility.

It's days until Erik (Magneto) realizes that he hasn't the faintest idea what's on these television broadcasts. He only has eyes for Charles. He reads Kennedy's call for calm in the set of Charles' jaw. He sees the riots reflected in Charles' eyes.

He can't take much of it.

Silent, he rises, steps between Charles and the television, steps out the door, to the darkened grounds of the mansion.

Through bright-lit windows, casting golden outlines on the lawn, he sees Charles still watching.

~*~

"It feels as though we should be _doing_ something," complains Raven, in step with Erik. "Are we going to live like this forever? Locked up in the mansion? The world can't stay outside forever."

Erik knows this.

"We won't," he tells her. "Not forever."

"He doesn't want us to go anywhere," she says.

"He'll change his mind." Erik doesn't even have to push. All he has to do is wait.

He glances up.

He sees a flicker of movement at a window, upstairs. _Listening, Charles_? he thinks.

There's no response.

~*~

He knocks on the door of Charles' room.

"Come in."

When Erik steps past the doorway, there's that same quick, easy smile, but there's something different, around the eyes.

"Erik." He seems pleased and surprised, but now Erik suspects that this is an act. After all, he almost certainly could sense Erik's presence outside the door.

Charles' face falls, a bit. "I did sense you, yes, but does that mean I can't be happy to see you?"

"Are you?" asks Erik, taking a seat across from Charles' wheelchair. There is an empty chessboard between them. "Happy to see me."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Erik examines Charles. Little things: the way he bites his lip, the way he looks away.

"Stop it." Charles' voice is sharp.

"Stop watching you?"

"You do it all the time."

"And you've been in the depths of my mind," Erik points out.

"Not recently." There's something of a pout in this statement. Resentment, that Erik won't bare his innermost thoughts to Charles, not since they left the beach.

It's true. But there's a reason for it. Erik is afraid that he knows how this will go, and how this will end. He's terrified of it. And if Charles knows, if he sees, then perhaps it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After all, innocence, in times like these, is made to be broken. And Charles has a sort of deep, worldly innocence, a kind Erik has never seen, and a kind that will devastate the world if it's ever shattered.

Erik gestures to the chess board. "Shall we?"

As he's setting up the chess pieces: "Are you ever going to be part of the classes?" asks Charles. "Teaching the children."

"I don't think so," says Erik.

"They look up to you."

Erik is aware of this.

"They could learn a lot from you."

"I don't think it's the sort of lesson you'd like them to hear."

Charles has white; Erik black. This is simply how it goes.

Charles wins, but not without paying a high price. This is simply how it goes.

"Are you staying out of pity?" presses Charles, later in the night. "Do you pity me? For this?" And that 'this' encompasses everything. The useless legs. The privileged life.

"Is that what you see in me?"

Erik realizes, now, that he's gotten a habit of turning Charles' questions around on him. And since the telepath won't reach into Erik's mind, out of some self-placed boundary since he couldn't stop Erik's murder -- well, it frustrates Charles. It leads him in circles.

"I don't know what I see in you!" snaps Charles.

He hesitates.

He's about to ask if he can touch Erik's mind again.

"Good night, Charles," says Erik, moving to his feet.

~*~

They've toyed with quiet flirtation for weeks now. The thrill of finding new mutants was one thing; hotel rooms, Charles' delighted laugh, the wry way he always met Erik's eyes. There has been desire there. Erik knows it. He acknowledges that. But, somehow, the dance never turned into anything more than that: a quiet duet of almost-intimacy.

And now, there is something broken between them.

Erik broke it, of course. Destruction is his gift. He is a weapon. His mother gave birth and life to him, but that was taken from him, and his humanity was shaved away in little slivers until there was only metal left. Only iron and steel, strong aluminum and flexible copper and dark pewter.

He is every metal. He is none of them.

~*~

Erik considers the possibility that he has been selfish. He has kept Charles for himself, at the cost of …

Well, the cost has not yet been determined.

~*~

Erik awakens in the night with a hammering heartbeat, wide eyes, a bitter taste in his mouth.

The bitter: it's adrenaline.

It isn't the old nightmare this time. It's something new.

He rises from the bed, snatching a robe from the hook on the door as he goes. Up the stairs, moving quiet as a cat on the old hardwood floor. He doesn't knock on Charles' door, just lets himself in.

There he is. Awake, but only just so, blinking in the light of his lamp.

"What is it?" he asks, sleepily.

"Nightmares." Now that he's here, he doesn't know what to do. He has to fix this, he knows, he has to change his nature and mend instead of destroy. Perhaps he can prevent his prediction from coming true. Perhaps he can prevent Charles from shattering.

He doubts it.

But he has to try.

"Nightmares," echoes Charles. He squints at Erik. "Would you… do you want me to help?"

_You're the only one who can help._ He thinks the thought with precision and clarity and is rewarded with a blink of Charles' eyes, a slight straightening of his spine as he pushes himself more upright.

His legs drag behind him. Erik ignores them. He slides onto the bed next to Charles. Takes Charles hand. Ignores the started, vulnerable look -- he curls down all of Charles' fingers but two, and touches those two to his temple.

He _invites._

After all, this is the price of intimacy with a telepath. Or the advantage.

The mental touch sends shivers down his spine. Goosebumps starting at his temples. Charles' eyes are wide open, his free hand tight on Erik's bicep.

_I'm sorry. I needed time to think._ Erik isn't sure this is the truth, but it's something close enough to believe in.

_It's all right, it's all right, I forgive you_. The unthought addition: that Charles would always forgive Erik, no matter how bad it got.

Erik doesn't have to compartmentalize his mind. He thinks Charles would notice regardless. He just focuses on his fear, the heart of it, the fierce, terrible, protective rage. _I am a sword. I am your sword. I will never let anyone hurt you._ Protecting mutants like he never -- like he never could --

(It's a thought he is incapable of completing.)

_You're not a sword._

Erik closes his eyes.

_Thousands of years ago, swords were first invented. A tool for warfare; they weren't good for anything else. An axe, you can fell trees. A club, you can beat rope._ [attached to this thought is a multitude of diagrams, texts and thoughts re: building ropes. Erik marvels at the depth of Charles' occasional obsessions.]

_But a sword… you can't plant crops, you can't fell trees. All you can do is kill._

_You're not a sword, Erik. You're so much more than that._

There are tears in Erik's eyes. Damn his lack of control, anyhow. Damn Charles, besides.

_I know you want to leave. I could make you stay. I could, but I won't._

An echo of earlier words. It's too late; Charles has made Erik stay with a method far more subtle than _mind control._

Dimly, he realizes: he's buried his head in the curve of Charles' shoulder. A position of something close to supplication. And Charles is speaking, out loud.

"Erik. Erik, it's all right, I promise."

Charles can't promise that. Erik doesn't care.

The first kiss he presses to Charles' skin is to the curve of his neck. And the second, and the third, and Charles' mind is sparking white-bright against his. Little spasms of thought and panic. It seems there is a level of intimacy that scares a telepath.

He crushes the softer lips under his.

"Erik, I can't." There's a confession there, an inadequacy. Erik surmises it: the bullet severed the nerves too high. He's lost sensation below the waist. Sex is an impossibility.

_Erik's gift is destruction._

Erik's mouth curves into a smile. _Let me in, Charles._

He feels Charles' mind descend over him, a deafening, bright blanket. Physical sensation is just a distant memory, but Erik focuses. He thinks his way up the curve of Charles' calf. Like fingertips moving slow up the skin.

He snaps back to reality in an instant when Charles' fingers tighten hard on the back of his neck.

"Feel that?" he murmurs.

"No one's ever tried that before." His voice is shaky. Erik assumes the answer is ‘yes’.

They don't leave the bed that night.

~*~

The next day, he flicks wicked thoughts at Charles as he jogs past the window, on his circuit of the mansion grounds.

\-- _on my knees in front of you, eyes closed, your fingers in my mouth --_

_\-- the way you'll feel around me --_

_\-- bright-hot feel of your mind when you lose control --_

He feels more than sees Charles stutter, in the lesson.

He smiles to himself.

~*~

That night at dinner, the same, in reverse. Charles' fingers play around the tines of a fork. His eyes flick, once in a while, to Erik.

And he doesn't let up.

Erik keeps his eyes carefully blank, through the maelstrom of filthy images, sensations. His heart thrums. He feels sweat-stained sheets when he skims his hand across the table. He sees Charles caught in ecstasy on the inside of his eyelids.

His narrowed eyes promise fulfillment to Charles, across the table.

~*~

Their life isn’t all fun and games. It isn’t all rough-and-tumble sex, more mental than physical. It isn’t all classes and books and jogs around the mansion.

Another evening chess game, another bold, careful strategy, and Erik senses in the narrowed set of Charles’ eyes that he’s about to say something. Something important.

“I do think it’s time for us to start taking action,” says Charles, mildly.

Erik smiles.

~*~

Erik has been trained to kill. Kill quickly, kill silently, accomplish the mission and go. There are few Special Forces teams in the world that could compete with his sheer physical strength, endurance, even without the added bonus of his powers.

More than that: at some point, he grew to enjoy it. As his skills sharpened, as his body grew taut and strong, he began to like the rush of adrenaline.

But, these missions --

_“Don’t kill,” warns Charles, before they leave. “ Don’t.” _

Charles feels, that it will endanger the mutant position in the world.

Erik is fairly certain that there’s little the mutants can do to make themselves worse. But Charles’ eyes make direct contact with his, and there’s a desperate yearning there. The grasp of a man who has felt his idealism take a blow, and wants it proved right.

Erik wants Charles by his side.

Funny: now that he’s gone on so many missions, killed so many people, he’s skilled enough that he doesn’t have to.

By default, he leads the teams out on the missions. He feels Charles’ edginess from the air: he hates being trapped to the mansion, to the ground, away from the mission.

It’s like …

It’s something like having a mission control. A voice in his ear, directing him, giving him tips and hints. But it’s better. Because it’s _Charles_. Because the voice isn’t in his ear, it’s in his mind. There’s a reason they worked so fluidly together, from the first time. Charles isn’t a distraction, not ever -- he always says just the right thing.

Nothing compares with the thrill of a fight when he knows Charles is in his eyes, his ears, his tongue and throat and memory.

~*~

The number of students grows, but slowly. There are never too many of them. Every time it seems they'll hit the double-digits there's another runaway, another incident.

Charles is disappointed. Erik doesn't feel much one way or the other.

Erik flicks the blade of a Swiss Army knife between his fingers, and he watches. He always watches. He watches Charles.

He only has eyes for Charles.

~*~

After a time, he begins to believe that he’s solved his problems.

Yes, he’s settled for less. Navigating the waters ahead requires a constant jostling for control between him and Charles, each pulling in subtly different ways. (It tears Raven apart; he sees this.) Erik has given up what he really wanted, his own fight, in exchange for something he needed: Charles.

It is an imperfect life.

But it is a happy one. After a fashion.

For both of them.

~*~

A year later, he starts to believe. Charles wins the arguments, more often than not.

~*~

Looking in the mirror, Erik finds that the starry-eyed idealism in Charles’ eyes has somehow been echoed in his own scarred, roughened face.

Unfathomable, how that could have occurred.

~*~

Three years after they first met, almost to the day.

This is when it all begins to change.

~*~

It isn’t a mission.

Or, at least, it doesn’t start as a mission. It starts as a vacation. Bright shores and sunny climes: Barcelona. Spain. Erik laughs as Charles uses his lines on a waitress in surprisingly coherent Spanish.

(When questioned later:

“I didn’t think you knew Spanish,” says Erik.

“You knew what I was going to say,” points out Charles, with a wicked grin. “Your mind translated it. I didn’t have to.”

Erik echoes that grin. He always does.)

No, that’s the good part.

Later, they’re in a cable car, above Barcelona, when Charles senses something. He twists himself, pressing up against the window.

Smoke, visible outside.

“Erik,” says Charles.

A building on fire. Erik grimaces.

“ _Erik._ ”

“I know.”

Charles isn’t giving a thought to the potential danger, and Erik only gives a glancing one. They both can defend themselves. Hank can get the jet over here if they need it. Under the pressure of Erik’s thoughts, the door to the cable car flies open, and he lifts Charles.

Charles sort of wraps around him, as Erik’s arm goes around his waist. (Charles always wears metal, these days. Likewise, Erik never closes off his mind. Not entirely. These unspoken marks of trust bind them tighter than the sex ever will.)

The fire is bad. Very bad. An apartment building, crowded from -- from some sort of party, Charles gathers, leaning hard against Erik, fingertips pressed to his temple. Packed with people, and the fire began on the first floor. Trapping everyone inside. Firefighters clearing a way out, but the building in danger of collapse.

Charles doesn’t bother with words. He just touches Erik’s mind, points out the bits of the building worrying the structural engineer nearby.

There is metal in the building’s frame, of course.

Charles presents a complex solution, comprising of reinforcing the building’s structure at key points, while keeping an eye out for --

Erik shushes him.

Slowly, with groaning metal, with strain and crumbling rubble, the entire facade of the building peels up. Curls away, revealing the apartments within.

The firemen have to be jolted into action. They’re all too busy staring at Erik and Charles. In awe. Or fear. Or both.

~*~

The paper the next morning has both of their pictures.

This is where it starts to get bad.

The owners of the hotel recognize them.

The fellow guests at the hotel recognize them.

Hardly a day later, the manager makes a personal appearance at dinner and politely asks them to leave. Erik’s chest swells with fury. Charles quietly and politely leaves.

After, he won’t look at Erik.

~*~

That night, there’s a riot.

A little girl -- a future-seer, a fortune-teller -- is killed.

Charles gazes at her body in the morgue and something shifts behind his eyes.

~*~

“Does this change nothing for you?” asks Charles.

Erik can’t answer that. How can he? He saw this violence first. He knew the terrors that humans could inflict on one another. He’d depended on Charles to bring him out of that. “Should it?”

“ _She was nine years old!_ ” The shout, mental and physical, has the force of a blow. It would have knocked Erik off of his feet.

Had he not known it was coming.

“She was nine years old, and they beat her to death, like a -- like a --” Charles is lost for words.

_Like a Jew,_ is what Erik thinks.

~*~

More and more incidents surface. Governments and people have become more and more aware of mutants and the dis/advantages thereof. There are stories of children exploited for their abilities, of mutants killed for being different.

Charles used to take these stories, absorb them, and move on. Take steps to solve a problem.

Now, he begins to build his rage.

~*~

“Do you like it?” asks Charles, testing the heft of the new wheelchair. “Hank built it. A new lightweight model.”

Lightweight and plastic. Erik can’t sense a bit of metal on the whole thing.

He glances up to Charles. The eyes that meet his show nothing. “I’m sure it’ll serve its purpose,” he says.

Charles flinches.

~*~

Erik begins to close his mind.

He knows what’s coming.

~*~

But, still, he’s not expecting it.

That morning, he kisses Charles’ forehead, and leaves to recover an insect-girl in New York City. Skin that shines bright, a rainbow-carapace, an exoskeleton. Of course, this isn’t the problem; the problem is her disproportionate strength, her ability to leap. The police are after her.

The X-Men get there first.

Unfortunately, the police aren’t far behind.

There is no way to resolve this without deaths, but Eric does his level best. It doesn’t matter; the police fire. In the hail of bullets, anyone could get hit.

But he doesn’t realize how bad it’s really gotten until he feels the shout, deep in his mind, echoing through his bones. _Raven! Raven, Raven, Erik, you must go find her!_

Raven has taken a bullet in the shoulder. Just a graze, actually, Erik realizes, as he drags her out onto pollution-encrusted concrete. But the problem was that it threw her off the bridge where they fought. Into the water.

On filthy asphalt, Erik cradles her, copper-red hair flowing through his fingers. And then her copper-red blood.

Erik shuts Charles out of his mind. He does chest compressions, five, six, seven, eight... Breathing for her, beating her heart for her, with a quiet, matter-of-fact precision.

It’s only when she gasps in a breath of air that he allows himself to remember his surroundings.

And that’s when he realizes that the fight has gone silent.

When he climbs back onto the bridge, Raven in his arms, he sees the reason why. All of the cops are dead. All of them. Slumped over a steering wheel, clutching a gun -- no matter where they were, what they were doing, every cop in that fight began to suffocate the second Raven’s heart stopped.

Charles killed them all.

~*~

Back at the mansion, Erik regards Charles impassively. This is a front; inside, he feels as though a maelstrom has taken hold of his emotions. He doesn’t know what to feel.

“Why didn’t you kill them?” asks Charles. “Why didn’t you want to?”

“You taught me not to,” returns Erik.

Charles’ fists are clenched in impotent frustration. No; frustration. So clear, now, that it’s far from impotent.

“I was wrong,” says Charles.

“No,” says Erik. “You weren’t.” He moves to his feet. “I think it’s time you left, Charles.”

~*~

The world descends into chaos.

The armies of mankind throw themselves again and again at mutants. Always in the most horrifying, foolish ways. The Pentagon is not calling the shots, here. No; there is some other puppet master.

~*~

This brings them to Chicago.

The silent human army.

The ragged group of mutants. Men and women, now, who have seen too much death. And still, Charles doesn’t give up.

He has tasted death, and he will never have enough.

Erik glances around, to his companions, and he sees nothing but hopelessness reflected in them. They are nothing without Professor X. They built what they were, on him.

This is Erik’s fault. He knows this. If he had given Charles a concrete enemy to fight, a point of view he could never take, then Charles would have been the good guy. Always the good guy. But Erik, instead, stayed. And Charles never understood why. Erik left a vacuum, and Charles filled it.

Erik’s talent, as ever:

Destruction.

“Don’t hold back,” he advises them. They win this fight, or they lose everything.

Angel gives a sharp nod. Her wings flutter free.

Erik stretches out a hand. He stretches out his mind. So much metal...

~*~

The mutants win.

~*~

With mankind so scattered, so broken, the supermen take over. Erik, at the head.

Charles was successful, at that.

~*~

Emma Frost steps into Cerebro for the first time less than a week after the victory. She settles the helmet on her head.

“Be careful,” growls Erik.

She gives him a cool glance. “I’ll find Xavier,” is all she says.

~*~

He finds him on the seventeenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. A skyscraper that’s completely empty, he notices, as he steps inside. No one noticed, evidently.

Of course no one noticed.

He considers the elevator; he takes the stairs.

He finds Charles, wasted and thin, reclined on a bed, in an empty, white room.

“Here to kill me, Erik?” he asks.

“Can’t you read my mind?”

Of course he can’t. The helmet blocks any chance of that. Erik feels much, much safer that way. He doesn’t know Charles anymore. He can’t predict him anymore.

Charles laughs, hollowly. “You know,” he says, “a more suspicious man than I might think you’d set this all up to suit you.”

“Oh?” asks Erik, sliding into a chair next to him.

“Because you thought I could destroy the world faster than you could. So you stayed, and you let me fall.”

“This isn’t what I wanted,” says Erik.

“Your hands are clean, Erik,” murmurs Charles. “It’s my name that will be cursed for the next hundred years. Go and rebuild. Kill me, and usher in a new age for mankind.”

Erik’s hand slips into Charles’.

“It feels like a dream,” Erik murmurs. “Like we’ll awaken, and find we’re back on that beach.”

Charles’ expression twists. “I wish that were true.”

Erik’s free hand smoothes the hair on Charles’ forehead. “For you,” and now he knows this is the truth, “I would choose differently.”

“I love you,” breathes Charles.

Erik’s eyes blur with tears.

He can see how it will go. He’ll kill Charles. He’ll be the world’s savior. With a common villain, even one in the past, mutants and humans can live together. They can build together. Humans, in fact, will depend on mutants for survival.

A new society.

Maybe not a better one. But a new one.

Erik’s hand moves to the knife at his thigh. Grips it … and goes lax again.

“I can’t do it,” says Erik. He slips off the helmet, and slowly, cautiously opens his mind.

“Depending on me one last time?” asks Charles, tiredly.

Erik is silent.

_Kill me,_ comes the thought. The command. The knife leaps into his hand, almost of its own accord.

~*~

It happens just as Erik predicted.


End file.
